Pakistan’s score on Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) improved by one point in the latest assessment, but the change also highlights questions about the underlying data, methodology and the extent to which international perceptions of public-sector corruption reflect the experiences of people and businesses within the country.
Transparency International’s 2025 CPI, released in February 2026, assigned Pakistan a score of 28 out of 100 and placed the country at 136th among 182 countries. In the previous assessment, Pakistan had scored 27 and ranked 135th among 180 countries. The latest figures therefore show an increase in the score but a decline of one position in the numerical ranking. Transparency International has stressed that CPI scores are more meaningful than rankings because the number of countries included and their respective performances can influence a country’s position.
The CPI is not an investment rating, credit assessment or condition attached to International Monetary Fund lending. However, corruption and governance indicators can contribute to the broader assessment of country risk used by investors, companies, lenders and international institutions. The IMF’s 2025 Governance and Corruption Diagnostic for Pakistan identified corruption and governance weaknesses as factors affecting economic growth and investment. Citing research, the IMF said every one-point improvement in the CPI is associated with a 4% increase in a country’s investment rate, while also noting that this relationship represents an association rather than proof that an improvement in the CPI directly causes higher investment.
Pakistan’s latest CPI score was derived from eight external sources rather than a direct survey of Pakistani citizens. Transparency International uses 13 sources globally and requires countries to have at least three sources available for inclusion. The CPI assesses perceived public-sector corruption among experts and businesspeople. For Pakistan, five of the eight published source scores remained unchanged, two declined and one recorded a substantial increase. Bertelsmann remained at 21, the Economist Intelligence Unit at 18, Global Insights at 32, PRS International Country Risk Guide at 33 and the World Bank’s Country Policy and Institutional Assessment at 39. The World Economic Forum score declined from 33 to 32, while the World Justice Project score dropped from 26 to 25. V-Dem recorded the largest movement, rising by five points from 14 to 19.
The published whole-number figures from the eight sources add up to 219, producing an arithmetic average of 27.375. Transparency International’s published CPI score, however, is 28. This difference does not demonstrate an error because the organisation uses underlying unrounded figures before calculating and standardising scores. As a result, the precise calculation cannot be reproduced using only the publicly displayed whole-number source scores. This leaves an important data-transparency question concerning the exact unrounded figures supplied to the CPI process and how close the resulting value was to the threshold for a score of 28.
The movement in the V-Dem assessment is particularly relevant because it was the only substantial positive change among Pakistan’s eight source-level scores. V-Dem relies on expert assessments and statistical modelling, and its datasets can be revised when newer information or updated versions become available. The available CPI information does not establish precisely what caused the five-point increase in Pakistan’s V-Dem score. Possible methodological factors in such datasets can include changes to expert assessments, revisions to historical observations, updated indicators or changes associated with the model, but no specific factor should be treated as the established explanation without the underlying data.
The eight CPI sources also do not operate as identical surveys. The World Economic Forum uses an executive opinion survey, while the World Justice Project combines household and expert information. Bertelsmann uses expert assessments, V-Dem applies expert coding and statistical modelling, and the Economist Intelligence Unit, Global Insights and PRS International Country Risk Guide use country-risk assessments. The World Bank’s Country Policy and Institutional Assessment is an institutional assessment. Transparency International standardises these different source results before combining them into the final CPI score.
This methodological structure means that the eight sources represent different types of evidence, respondents, experts, assessment periods and analytical approaches. Their standardised results receive equal treatment in the final CPI calculation, which is a methodological choice rather than evidence that the underlying measurements are identical. Another consideration is statistical independence. The organisations are institutionally separate, but their assessments could draw on some of the same public events, legal developments, government information, media reporting or expert networks. This does not establish duplication or bias, but it means that the existence of eight sources should not automatically be interpreted as eight completely independent measurements.
Another limitation is that the CPI labelled 2025 does not necessarily represent eight assessments covering exactly the same calendar year. Different underlying sources can use different reference periods, with some assessments relying on information from earlier periods and others reflecting more recent developments or longer evaluation windows. Consequently, a policy change or governance development occurring late in 2025 may not immediately appear across all sources, while earlier developments can continue to influence assessments.
The distinction between international perception and domestic experience can also be seen in Pakistan’s own surveys. Transparency International Pakistan conducts a separate National Corruption Perception Survey and has clarified that it does not collect data or calculate Pakistan’s global CPI score. Its 2025 National Corruption Perception Survey covered 20 districts across all four provinces and recorded 3,989 completed responses. Police were identified as the most corrupt sector by 24% of respondents, followed by tendering and procurement at 16% and the judiciary at 14%. The survey also found that 66% of respondents said they had not paid a bribe for a public service during the previous 12 months, while 77% expressed dissatisfaction with government efforts to combat corruption.
Transparency International Pakistan changed its sampling approach for the 2025 survey, moving from non-probability convenience sampling to a multistage stratified cluster design. Approximately 1,000 respondents were allocated to each province, with participants selected at public locations including markets, parks, government buildings and community gathering points. The published methodology does not provide all the information required to independently reproduce the selection process, including individual selection procedures within venues, treatment of refusals and replacements, or selection probabilities. Equal provincial allocation also requires appropriate weighting to represent Pakistan’s population because the provinces differ considerably in population size.
A previous judicial case has also demonstrated the importance of transparency in domestic corruption surveys. In April 2024, the Peshawar High Court directed Transparency International Pakistan to recall and republish its 2023 National Corruption Perception Survey after reviewing findings related to the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa judiciary. The court identified deficiencies in ethical and methodological rigour and found the findings concerning the provincial judiciary not credible. It also questioned the treatment of responses relating to bribe payments and highlighted issues involving data analysis and the distinction between perception and actual conduct.
The 2024 court judgment does not establish that the 2025 National Corruption Perception Survey contains the same problems, particularly because the later survey adopted a substantially different methodology. It does, however, provide a documented example of why survey sampling, response treatment, weighting and data analysis need to be sufficiently disclosed when public corruption indicators are produced.
A separate survey conducted by Ipsos and the Federation of Pakistan Chambers of Commerce and Industry provides another perspective. The Index of Transparency and Accountability in Pakistan, based on fieldwork conducted in December 2025 and January 2026, interviewed more than 6,000 respondents across 82 urban and rural districts and more than 195 tehsils. It also included a separate sample of approximately 300 respondents from government institutions. The survey found that 68% believed bribery was common in public institutions, while 27% reported personally facing a bribe demand. Similarly, 56% considered nepotism widespread, compared with 24% who said they had personally experienced favouritism affecting merit.
The difference between these measurements illustrates why perceptions and personal experiences should not be treated as interchangeable indicators. International experts and business executives may evaluate public-sector corruption through country-risk assessments, while domestic respondents can report whether they personally encountered a bribe demand or favouritism. Neither measure by itself provides a complete audit of corruption across Pakistan’s public institutions.
The CPI score of 28 should therefore not be interpreted as meaning that 28% of Pakistanis are corrupt, that a particular percentage of public funds has been misappropriated or that citizens have paid bribes at a corresponding rate. The index is a perception-based measure of public-sector corruption. Transparency International itself acknowledges that the CPI does not directly capture several areas, including illicit financial flows, private-sector corruption, money laundering or citizens’ direct experiences.
At the same time, the perception-based nature of the CPI does not make it irrelevant to economic analysis. The IMF’s governance diagnostic linked corruption and institutional weaknesses with economic performance, investment and private-sector development. For international investors and financial institutions, governance conditions can form part of a broader assessment alongside fiscal conditions, monetary stability, external financing, regulatory structures and other country-risk factors.
Transparency International has said it stands by the CPI methodology and has referred to independent statistical work by the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre, which has reproduced and audited the index at the overall level. The organisation has also said that the change in Pakistan’s latest score was not statistically significant and described the country’s five-year trend as stagnant, with Pakistan remaining in the bottom quartile of the index.
The organisation also confirmed that it did not conduct a sensitivity exercise excluding V-Dem from Pakistan’s calculation. On questions about the five-point V-Dem increase, Transparency International referred inquiries to V-Dem, which produces the underlying data. It said the CPI uses all available source data and that its methodology does not remove individual observations simply to test how a country’s score would change.
The available evidence therefore presents several separate measurements rather than a single definitive picture of corruption in Pakistan. The CPI measures perceived public-sector corruption through external assessments, the National Corruption Perception Survey measures domestic perceptions through a national survey and the Ipsos-FPCCI index combines perceptions with reported personal experiences. Their different results reflect differences in methodology and the populations and issues being measured.
Pakistan’s CPI scores have remained within a relatively narrow range in recent years, moving from 28 in 2021 to 27 in 2022, 29 in 2023, 27 in 2024 and 28 in 2025. The latest one-point increase coincided with a five-point increase in the V-Dem source, while two other sources declined and five remained unchanged. The change therefore needs to be viewed in the context of the index’s methodology rather than attributed automatically to a particular policy, government action or reform.
The central data questions concern how the final score was calculated from unrounded source values, what specifically drove the V-Dem movement, how much the different sources overlap in their underlying information and how closely international perception indicators correspond with domestic experiences. These questions do not by themselves establish manipulation or error, but greater source-level transparency would allow researchers, policymakers and the public to examine the measurements more closely.
For Pakistan’s economy, the significance of the CPI lies less in the numerical ranking alone and more in how governance perceptions interact with investment, institutional confidence and assessments of the business environment. The latest score provides one indicator within that broader picture, while domestic surveys, institutional assessments and economic data provide other measures that need to be considered separately.
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